Traffic engineers monitor data throughput across network devices, such as routers and switches. In many instances, the network devices may be oversubscribed in an attempt to improve data throughput. Oversubscribing may refer to the situation where a network provider sells more bandwidth to customers than the network devices can provide based on the low likelihood that all of the customers will be using all of their purchased bandwidth at the same time. In conventional systems, an oversubscription factor is statically assigned to each interface on a network device based on the experience of a traffic engineer. For example, an interface of a network device may be set to a bandwidth of one gigabit per second (1 Gbps) with an oversubscription factor of 2:1 allowing for up to 2 Gbps of bandwidth to be provisioned across the interface.
These and other embodiments and advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example the principles of the various exemplary embodiments.